What Remains
by chrissie0707
Summary: Tag for 2X01 "In My Time of Dying." Dean didn't think there could possibly be a way for him to feel worse, and then Sam takes the turn into Bobby's, and the Impala comes into view. What's left of her.


_Author Note: As promised, here's the other IMTOD tag. All the thanks in all the land go out to the Prompt Master, who keeps me supplied with ideas for stories, and all of you supplied with words._

* * *

 **What Remains**

* * *

Everyone involved wants him to spend another night in the hospital. For observation, and likely tests, because there's still no medically acceptable explanation for his sudden recovery. He was _dead_ , right? And that's not…you don't just come back from that. But that means another night in this white-walled, sterile-smelling prison, tethered to a gurney by tubes and wires in the place where his father died, so Dean doesn't give a rat's ass what anyone wants.

He ultimately concedes, because his brother seems to be sitting right at the threshold of losing his shit completely, and he doesn't have nearly the energy necessary to deal with that.

Physically speaking, Dean feels tired and sore and generally lousy. Even after being read an impressive list of what's no longer at risk of killing him, he's sitting here in the aftermath of a hell of a rattle. A concussion pulses behind his eyes, leaving him nauseated and overly sensitive to every light, sound, and smell in the room. His ribs twang sharply with each breath, his arm aches, and his back and hips are trauma-stiff.

Emotionally…well, he's keeping that at arm's length for the time being. Sam won't leave his side, meaning Dean hasn't had more than two minutes alone all day, hasn't been able to process anything that's happened beyond _Dad's gone_. That sense of loss is widening into a gaping chasm inside, but he can't let the grief monster in or he might not be able to climb back out of that hole.

Above all else, he feels like he might shoot the next person who asks him how he's feeling.

Sam keeps asking him what he remembers, which isn't much. His brother has a hell of a lot more information than Dean does about how the past two days have gone down. Something about a broken water glass and a Ouija board, and a reaper that he can't even pretend to remember. That part's concerning, and Dean knows that, but no matter how many prompts Sam offers, he can't fill in the blanks. It's not just the reaper, though; things even further back are hazy and difficult to recall. He's got a hole in his memory the size of an eighteen-wheeler, and some seriously gnarly gashes stitched up across his chest.

He remembers the cabin: the Colt gripped in his sweaty palm and Dad with yellow eyes, a fiery _rip_ of pain that felt like it would end him. Then the damn tube down his throat and Sam yelling for help.

He's alive, and he supposes that means something. Or, he supposes it _should_ mean something. He feels…strange. Like he's not quite where he should be, though he can't imagine being anywhere Sammy isn't. That pit in his stomach, that knowing that _something is wrong_ has never abated, even after…

 _How'd I ditch it?_

He didn't. Obviously. But that doesn't mean he's ready to start voicing any theories, regardless of how pathetic and lost and needy Sammy looks.

Besides, he really only has one.

* * *

By morning, Sam seems to have decided to take all his anxiety and grief and redirect that energy into smothering his brother.

"You really feel okay?"

"I feel fine, Sam." The same flat, not-entirely-true response as yesterday, which causes his brother to sigh, but it's better than shooting him.

"Okay," Sam relents. He's jittery as fuck, stripes of spilled coffee staining the white paper cup in his hand, one that's likely his third or fourth of the morning.

Neither of them slept last night, for obvious reasons, and exhaustion is exacerbating the headache rebounding through Dean's skull. He's planning on downing three or four or ten cups of coffee himself, as soon as he escapes this hellhole. Then whiskey. Lots of whiskey.

"Just…are you sure you should leave?"

Sam waits until Dean's lacing his boots to ask one more time. He's already wearing the clothes his brother brought for him, jeans he doesn't recognize and a plain black t-shirt that's not blood-soaked. The kid might have a point, because just doing up his shoes is taking it out of him. The angle required is aggravating a dozen aches, but he'll be damned if he can't get his own shoes on.

A bead of cool sweat runs from his hairline down the side of his face, and Dean swipes it away against his shoulder. God, he _hurts_. There's a pair of prescriptions crammed in his pocket, but when Sam asks if the doctor gave him anything for the pain, he finds himself jerking his chin in the negative and wincing from the motion.

Sam's eyebrows twitch, and his head rotates toward the door. "That doesn't sound right." His expression hasn't changed much in the past twenty-four hours: pale and shell-shocked.

Dean wonders if either of them will ever smile again. "I'm fine, Sam." He's got a couple of ribs that say otherwise, twinging sharply as he lowers his boot to the floor.

"Okay," his brother says quietly, fingers tightening around his coffee cup. He looks and sounds utterly unconvinced.

And that's just fine. Because Sam doesn't have to be convinced, he just has to deal with it. Dean's not staying another damn _minute_ in this hospital.

The room falls quiet and still. Sam sets his cup aside on the counter by the door and pushes the hair off his forehead, wincing as his fingertips contact the bruises around his right eye. "Bobby lent me a car," he says finally, overly loud. "Or, most of one, anyway. Should get us back to his place before it craps out entirely."

"Okay," Dean replies after a moment, because Sam's staring at him like he's waiting for a response.

"He's, uh…he's going to…"

"Yeah," he says, thinking, _shut up, Sammy._ Bobby had more or less taken over, paperwork-wise, the second he walked into this hospital room. Dean understands what Bobby's doing. He gets it. He doesn't need to hear about it.

Sam silently hands over a small plastic bag that contains Dean's bracelet and ring, pulls the corded amulet from his own pocket. The one that had once been meant for Dad.

* * *

He dozes on the way to Bobby's, broken sleep regularly interrupted by jarring nightmares of yellow eyes and vicious, loud impacts, and the fact Sam's a shit driver with a stick shift. Every time the kid fumbles from first to second gear, the four-wheeled rust bucket lurches forward with a force that's torture on Dean's ribs and might eventually send him straight through the windshield. He thinks that would be a bit redundant.

He gives up on sleep with about thirty minutes to go and shifts in his seat until he finds a relatively comfortable position. He squints silently out the window and clenches his jaw against a rising need to vomit, longing for sunglasses and maybe one of those painkillers he didn't collect.

Dean didn't think there could possibly be a way for him to feel worse, and then Sam takes the turn into Bobby's, and the Impala comes into view.

What's left of her.

His breath catches audibly in his sore, damaged chest, and it's spectacle enough to draw the attention of his brother.

"I know it looks bad," Sam says softly, easing the car to a stop. "But – "

"Shut up, Sam."

Sam shuts up, clamps his jaw shut tightly and gives a stiff nod.

About five miles out, his brother had tried to warn him. To prepare him, but even knowing what _he_ looks like, how he feels from being inside that car, it hadn't made sense. Now, Dean wants to cry and scream and rage at the sky. Seeing the Impala, it's _real_. He doesn't remember the crash, but there's no longer any denying the damage done.

He tries to exit the borrowed car smoothly, but he's stiff and slow-moving, and Sam has made it around to the passenger side by the time Dean has fumbled his way out of the seatbelt. He'd buckled in because his brother had ordered him to with that rare but lethal _don't fuck with me_ face.

Sam pulls open the door, starts fretting and pawing and "helping" Dean extricate his stubborn limbs from the car. Dean flaps a hand and waves his brother away, and Sam backs up with an "okay, fine" that is only slightly affronted. He folds his arms over his chest and silently watches as Dean slowly pulls himself the rest of the way to his feet.

His brother immediately tries to steer him toward the house, and Dean shakes him away again. Sweat runs down his back as he moves toward the Impala. From the heat, he tells himself, not the emotion, and certainly not the exertion. Shit, he's only walked across the yard. He moves wordlessly toward the wrecked Impala, keeping his left elbow tucked into his throbbing side. He feels Sam's presence the whole way, staying close but not thankfully not suffocating him.

She's on an aisleway, in a line with three junkers, worthless hunks of twisted metal awaiting salvage and scrap. The frame is warped, at first glance irreparably so. The hood is buckled nearly in half, and the savage crumpling on the passenger side is stark, irrefutable proof that they're lucky to be alive. He hadn't been able to see the blood from the driveway. Up close, Dean's gaze is immediately drawn to the rust-colored smears on the dash and seats of the Impala, marks of Dad and Sammy and Dean himself. More blood saturating the backseat and floormat, splattered across the door. Too much, more than Dean should have been able to lose.

 _Lucky._

Yeah, that's it.

Luck had nothing to do with any of this.

"Bobby said that…" Sam rubs at the back of his neck, grimaces. "But I knew you'd want to fix it up."

Dean feels the weight of his brother's expectant gaze pressing on him, slumping his shoulders and causing every bruise to sing out, a vicious thrum throughout his thrashed face and a painful bleat behind his eyes. The kid's waiting for him to speak, so he says, "yeah," his voice a low, scratchy sound that disappears as soon as it leaves his lips.

"He'll be back soon. You should – you should come inside."

He doesn't want to come inside. He wants to close his eyes, wants this to have never happened. He wants to see his baby sleek and shiny and whole, not bent and cracked, all shorn steel and ripped upholstery. He wants to go back nine months, a year, four years, to when things made sense and he knew what to do.

He wants to feel the warm weight of his father's hand on his shoulder, never saying but always communicating _it's okay._ Dad thought it was Dean who did that, but knowing what he does now, he can't possibly see how anything will be okay.

Dean doesn't know how long he stands there, how long _they_ stand there, but the setting sun is stabbing his tired eyes, and the aches have settled into his body. Dull throbs in bruises throughout, sharp ragging in his fractured ribs, a nauseating pound in his skull.

He focuses on the physical pain, tries to use it as a distraction. But it's a shit one, and as his father's words resound in his head, Dean has to stick a hand out and steady himself against the warped frame of the Impala.

Sammy doesn't know – _can't_ know– and doesn't understand. He thinks this is about the car. Suddenly, there's a tentative but comforting hand on Dean's shoulder, mindful of the full-body ache. "You can fix it, Dean."

Yeah. Yeah, maybe he can.

Maybe he has to.

Dean pushes away from the car with a wince, wipes it from his face before he turns to Sam. "Damn straight," he replies with a curt nod, a carefully blank expression. He claps his little brother on the shoulder as he sets a course for the house. "It'll be okay, Sammy."


End file.
